Lord of the Abyss & Desert Warrior (18 page)

He wanted to bite that throat.

Hard.

And suddenly, he had the answer. “You will make me be not angry.”

Her gaze slammed into his. “What?”

“You will convince me not to be angry.”

“How?” She shook her head, as if her thoughts wouldn’t settle. “I can ask for forgiveness but—”

“No. Words aren’t enough. You lied to me with words.”

“Then?”

“Come.” Taking her hand, he ordered her to leave the dishes and dragged her up the stairs and to his bedroom. “Here,” he said, turning to trap her against the closed door. “This is where you will convince me to be not angry.”

L
ILIANA’S MIND SIMPLY STOPPED
working for several long seconds. Because before Micah had shut the door and pinned her to it, his arms braced palms-flat on either side of her head, her eyes had fallen on the massive four-poster bed with black sheets that she’d occupied the night before the Arachdem invasion. A bed in which she’d fallen asleep waiting for the Guardian of the Abyss.

“Liliana.”

She scraped up her pride, set her jaw. “What if I say I don’t want to?” Being with him again was a temptation almost beyond bearing, but she wouldn’t degrade herself, not even to appease this man whom she’d foolishly thought had cared for her at least a little.

“I would touch you between the legs and prove you a liar.”

He must truly hate her, to want to humiliate her this much. “Am I your prisoner?” she asked, shame a cold, cold rock on her heart; each and every memory of intimacy stained with an ugliness that made her want to tear out her soul because those memories were her greatest treasure.

Eyebrows lowering, he pushed off the door. “Go. Go, then.” Turning away, he folded his arms.

He’d let her go.

Even after the lies she’d told him, and though he was so furious his eyes glittered hard as gemstones, he’d let
her go—when he would have been perfectly justified in hurting her.
No,
she thought,
no
. That was the dark reasoning of a woman who had been raised in the house of someone who had treated her like a piece of property, his to break and bloody and beat.

For Micah, a man with honor that ran so deep and true it had survived the Abyss itself, hurting a woman would be anathema. Yet he’d brought her to his bedroom, demanded she defuse his anger. The proximity of the bed led to only one conclusion, but she knew it was the wrong one.

Hurting, confused, scared the hope inside her was a mirage, she took a page out of his own book and just asked, “Why did you bring me here?”

Silence.

Angry and frustrated, but wanting him more than she’d wanted anyone or anything—even her freedom—she stomped around to face him. When he refused to lower his head to meet her gaze, she slammed her fists on his armored chest. “I need to know, you big sulking beast!” It just slipped out.

And it made him glance down, his gaze blade-green, his words snarling with anger. “You wanted to leave. There’s the door.”

Glaring at him, she barely resisted the urge to kick at his booted foot. “I thought…”…
you wanted to humiliate me.
She bit off the words before they could escape, because to say those words would be to hurt him in a way this man should never, ever be hurt.

No. Words aren’t enough. You lied to me with words.

“Liliana, you are not leaving.”

This is where you will convince me to be not angry.

“Why are you not leaving?” It was a growl.

“We enjoyed each other in the great hall,” she whis
pered, speaking past her embarrassment because she had to fix this. “On the chair.”

His eyes gleamed and she knew, she
knew,
he was imagining her naked flesh on his own as she moved over the hot, hard ridge of his arousal. “I don’t think you enjoyed it so very much.”

“I did.” Swallowing to wet a dry throat, she stood on tiptoe, realization a shimmering rain through her senses. “Please bend down a little.”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to convince you to be not angry.” There had been nothing brutal or cruel in his demand, in his dragging her to his room. Micah hadn’t grown up in the world, didn’t think in the ways of a sophisticated courtier or a world-weary seducer, had never had cause to learn to hide lies behind charm or to become jaded in his sexuality. For him, there was only pleasure in this act, only delight…and so he’d used it to give her a way to ask for forgiveness that would cause her no pain.

Sweet mercy but she loved him.
“Micah, please.”

He dipped his head an inch. Just barely enough to allow her to brace her hands on his shoulders and press her lips to the line of his throat. “Are you still angry?” A whisper.

“Very.” He bent a fraction more.

Still on tiptoe, she suckled kiss after kiss along his neck, his folded arms pressing against her torso. When she stopped to go back down flat on her feet, his eyebrows drew together in a heavy scowl. Heart thudding from the taste of him—hot skin and salt and Micah—she said, “If you’d sit down on the bed, I could go about this easier.”

Pure suspicion in his expression, but he stalked to sit on the edge of the bed, his thighs spread. Those thighs
were thick with muscle and coated in black armor that flowed over him with gleaming faithfulness. Not giving herself a chance to change her mind, she kicked off her shoes and straddled him in an echo of their loving in the great hall, curving her legs behind his back and locking them at the ankles.

He caught her with his hands on her waist but didn’t do anything else. Leaning down, she made good on her promise, suckling long, slow kisses down the other side of his neck. She stopped to lick at his pulse before retracing her journey. Still his hands remained locked in place, but his heartbeat pulsed hotter, faster…and his armor disappeared from his arms.

Wanting to moan at the sight, she reached out to shape and caress his bare skin, using her mouth on his jaw at the same time. His stubble was rough against her lips, a decadent sensation, his own lips firm. Moving her hand back to curve around his neck, she kissed him with soft sucks and licks.

It lasted about two seconds.

Fisting his hand in her hair, he angled her head the way he liked and then he devoured her mouth with a carnal intent so blatant that her legs clenched around the intrusion of his body.

“Are you wet between your thighs?” It was a rumbling question as he allowed her to breathe. Not giving her a chance to answer, he began to tug at her dress until it was over her bottom at the back, bunched between their bodies at the front. “Shall I touch you and find out?” Fingers playing over her thigh.

“I’ll tell you,” she whispered, breath coming in jagged gasps.

“You might lie.” His fingers on the inside of her thigh now, so close to her underthings.

“I won’t.” She nuzzled at him with an affection that felt utterly natural when she’d never had a chance to be affectionate with anyone, having learned never to love anything or anyone after her father murdered Bitty, for the Blood Sorcerer would take that love from her. But she couldn’t help it with Micah. “I promise.”

The slightly rough skin of his finger stroked along the edge of the fine fabric. Her heartbeat accelerated, her breath coming in soft puffs of air. Part of her wanted him to make good on his silent threat, so starved was she for his touch. But the rest of her…she needed him to believe her. To forgive her.

“I’m still angry.” Spoken against her mouth. “But I’ll let you tell me.”

Shuddering as he moved his hand back down to close over her thigh with stark proprietariness, she swallowed, said, “Yes.”

“Yes?” He squeezed her thigh. “I want more words.”

They stuck in her throat. Even after everything she’d done with Micah, all of it so scandalous it was obvious she was no respectable girl, she couldn’t say such a thing. It was a step too far over the line.

Kisses on her cheek, along her jaw, back up to her ear. “Say the words, Lily.” A husky order. “Say them and I’ll suck your pretty little nipples for you.”

Thunder roared in her ears, her mind overflowing with images of Micah’s mouth at her breasts, tugging hot and deep and strong. Rubbing her cheek against the abrasive skin of his jaw as he caught the sensitive flesh of her earlobe between his teeth, licked, she said, “I…I’m…” Her throat dried up, her fingernails digging into his nape.

He released her earlobe. “I’ll suck so hard.” A coaxing whisper that was all male, as was the rigid cock pressed
against her. “Until they’re tight and pouty and make me want to use my teeth.”

Sliding his hands down to her bottom, he repositioned her so she rode flush against his arousal. So hard and close that she realized the armor was gone. But he remained clothed in black, the fabric a thin barrier between them.

“For me, Lily.”

And the words tumbled out. “I’m wet between my legs. Needy and hot and—”

A hand gripping her jaw, holding her in place as Micah took her mouth his way again, demanding entrance and then demanding her full participation. Thrusting her hands into his hair, she gave him everything. The taste of him, dark and compelling and wild, was in her every breath, in her blood itself.

It took a deep masculine groan, his hand squeezing her bottom, for her to realize she was rubbing herself against the hard ridge of his erection in time with the thrusts of his tongue in her mouth. Too needy to be shocked, she continued her wanton actions, not stopping even when he broke the kiss to taste his way down the line of her neck, sucking hard enough over her pulse that he had to have left a mark.

He encouraged her to shameless excess, using his grip on her to urge her to increase her speed, ride against him even harder. But the position wasn’t quite right, and she couldn’t rub against the spot she needed. Brazen in her frustration, she tried to get closer, was foiled by the bunched-up fabric of her dress. “Please touch me.”

“That tiny nub?” Kissing her without waiting for an answer, he inserted his hand down the back of her underwear and touched her not where he’d said…but at the
pulsing entrance to her body, pushing in with a single rough-skinned fingertip.

Her entire frame went taut, arrows of sensation spearing out to every extremity. She knew she was dampening his hand, knew she was writhing on him, but she didn’t care. An instant later, the tiny muscles low in her body clenched hard.

It left her gasping for breath on his chest, her face buried against his neck. Murmuring in complaint when he removed his hand, she raised her head and watched with passion-hazed eyes as he lifted his finger to his mouth and—
“Micah.”

“You taste good, Lily.”

Wrung out from the pleasure that had just torn through her, she should’ve been limp and crawling. Instead, the place between her thighs tingled in anticipation, her breasts painfully tight against the coarse material of her dress.

“Now I will suck your nipples.” With that, he took the front of her dress in both hands and tore.

She didn’t protest, and all too soon, the coarse sensation was gone, to be replaced by the heated air. Her bare breasts rose up and down in a sharp rhythm, as if she was inviting his touch, but though he never moved his eyes off the small mounds, he didn’t touch her there until he’d torn the upper half of her dress completely off her body.

Only then did he span her rib cage with his hands. The sensation was beyond wonderful, but nothing came close to the impact of those eyes watching her with absolute focus. “They’re small,” she blurted out, because she couldn’t stand it anymore.

Micah’s answer was to dip his head and suck one begging nipple into his mouth. Trembling from the hot burn of pleasure, she thrust a hand into his hair and held on
for the ride. He sucked and rolled her nipple as if it was a favorite treat, playing and tugging with the unkissed one at the same time before covering her entire breast with his palm and squeezing.

“I like this,” he said, raising his head to devour her mouth before glancing down at her breasts again.

Not sure she could take that depth of eroticism, she nonetheless followed his gaze. Shuddered. Her nipple pouted taut and wet from his mouth, her breast flushed and red under the brown of her skin. As she watched, he continued to fondle her other breast with a big, confident hand.

“Don’t look away.” Switching his focus with that husky order, he began to pet her already pleasured breast with his hand, his mouth closing over the nipple he hadn’t earlier sucked. The first decadent tug had her crying out, her eyes locking with those of winter-green as his lashes lifted.

It was a shocking intimacy.

Perhaps that was why she said it. “Harder.”

Making a rumbling sound in his throat, he shifted his free hand to her back and pressed her impossibly closer as he obeyed her command, taking more of her breast into his mouth at the same time.

“That feels so good,” she said, scandalized at herself, but continuing to speak because Micah liked it. “The other one again.
Please
.”

Releasing her nipple with a wet sound, he demanded a kiss before giving her what she wanted, rolling and tasting her nipple as if it was a lushberry, one he intended to savor.

It made her wonder if he would give the nub between her thighs the same intense attention. “You make me have wicked thoughts.”

“Good.” He continued to suck and fondle her breasts with open enjoyment.

When she found the strength to whisper, “Are you still angry?” in his ear, he released her nipple with a graze of his teeth, and said, “Yes.”

She kissed the spot beneath his ear, made her way down his neck to the seduction of his pulse. “Are you sure?”

“Perhaps once I’ve licked you between the legs, I’ll change my mind.”

Every nerve in her body quivered in response. She knew full well he wasn’t angry at her any longer, but the Lord of the Black Castle had a way of getting what he wanted. So when he lifted her off him and placed her on the bed, she didn’t protest. Neither did she protest when he pulled away the remains of her dress, to leave her clothed only in thin underwear so soaked through it clung to the plump folds between her legs.

Coloring as he spread her thighs to kneel in between, she said, “I want to give you pleasure.” Her eyes dropped to his erection, so rigid behind the black material of his pants. “I could…I could suck you, too.”

A hard, possessive brand of a kiss. “You will,” he said, rising back into a sitting position. “Later.”

Her mouth watered. Never had she expected to have a lover, but she was a woman. She’d had dreams. However, not even in her most secret dreams had she dared hope for a lover who would be so unabashed about what he wanted and liked that he turned her bold and sinful, too.